Possible Horcruxes
Or, How to Handle Hand-Me-Downers
I live in a house full of hand-me-downs. I have always loved old things. As a horse back riding obsessed girl, I had a passion for Victorian design and pioneer style. Oh, to be born in the 1800s! (Not really. I enjoy voting, and a miscarriage I had might have killed me.) But oh, to wear bonnets and carry baskets! I credit and blame the dual influence of Laura Ingalls Wilder and early antiquing with my mom for these lasting passions for eras not my own.
As mentioned, many old things I live with now were other people’s old things first. When my father died he had no money, but he did leave behind stuff, as most people do. Since then, I’ve been on a three year journey of reckoning with the things I inherited from my dad: Impatience; a dislike of pretension; a love of words and silly nicknames, British witticisms, watching sports, dogs and walks in the woods; ceramic bowls of assorted sizes; some art; books—many; a painted wooden box; whimsical handcrafted toys; a brass carriage clock; a large rug.
I confess I’ve regarded many of these hand-me-downs, even those I consider aesthetically beautiful, hand-me-downers. His was a long, lonely end, and it’s difficult to not hold that up as a lens that colors all he’s left me. It’s difficult to know what to keep, as a treasured memory of this hugely important, wonderful and flawed person in my life, and what I can let go of as a heavy anchor I did not choose to inherit.
From the other side of my family, I have objects my great-grandparents picked out for their home, notably several pieces from a heavy (both emotionally and physically) set of brown furniture, two ornately carved wooden bureaus and a side table purchased from John Wanamaker Fine Furniture New York. Wanamaker’s, the internet tells me, was the first department store to introduce price tags. The NYC store opened in the early 1900s and offered employees free health care and profit sharing. I imagine these labor decisions were an impetus for these acquisitions—my great-grandfather, Arturo Giovannitti, was a labor leader who organized the Bread and Roses Strike of 1912 for textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and was sent to jail because of it. The objects hold much meaning and lore.
